13 Ups & 2 Downs From WWE SmackDown On FOX (Oct 4)
Cain Velasquez & Tyson Fury debut, Brock Lesnar becomes WWE Champion, and more!
Last night's SmackDown needed to be huge.
It was the biggest show of this crazy week in wrestling, edging out AEW's explosive Dynamite debut and Sunday's neglected Hell In A Cell pay-per-view. It was also night one of the biggest television contract in the sport's history. This is FOX. This is big time. Even with things like The Rock, Kofi Kingston vs. Brock Lesnar, and the promise of change on deck, it needed to deliver.
And it did.
This was WWE television at its biggest, loudest, and most bombastic. Hitting the airwaves with a fresh soundtrack, set, and presentation style, the new A-show raced through two hours of all-action programming crammed with newsworthy events. Combat sports athletes invaded the Staples Center to confront two of WWE's biggest and baddest, a new WWE Champion was crowned in a controversial main event, and WWE's most marketable modern star rubbed shoulders with The Rock. Elsewhere, NXT's old Four Horsewomen locked horns in tag action, Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon battled for their careers, and The Fiend tormented Seth Rollins once more.
Let's dive into it...
(Author's note: so it turns out the previous week's "last column ever spiel" was a tad premature. Sorry about that. This is the last one, though. I promise.)